Tag Archives: Charity PC Race

It's always great to wake up in the morning and see that you were featured on BBC UK...

It really is a great charity event and I'll definitely look forward to next year's event a little more. Especially if they bring back that awesome beef tenderloin at the buffet! With my new found fame in the UK, I'm wondering if I will be invited to drive the "Reasonably Priced Car" on Top Gear UK? It'll be the only way to find out if a Geek is faster than a Stig!

At CES 2011 this year, I did something that I didn't expect. I actually won the Build Your Own PC Race for Charity. Despite coming in second and fourth before in 2008 and 2007, I was never really a heavy weight contender to win. Nor did I feel that I would be able to repeat any of my past successes. It's a very Canadian way to think about things isn't it? But after thinking back to the things that transpired before the four minutes and nine seconds of racing, there were some key things that I did this year that might have created an opportunity for me to take the win this year.

No Pressure. No Panicking.

I arrived late to the event because I wasn't even sure I was going to go because I wanted to go with the rest of the Futurelooks Team to go race go-karts at another event put on by MSI Computer. So I casually strolled in, and was the last one to grab my number. I had actually panicked the organizers because I didn't correspond with them at all the week or so before the event. They even tried calling me minutes before I showed up right at the sign up. But of course, it was for charity and I had to make an appearance. I wasn't expecting to win. I just wanted to see if I could finish up quick enough to get in a race at the Go Kart track before the other event closed up.

I Did What I Was Good At

As many of you know, I like to eat. So the first thing I did was hit the buffet and stuff my pie hole. I took so many portions of the beef tenderloin that the lady carving recognized me and loaded me up. I was literally "mooing" by the time we were called for the racers meeting. Of course, I took another new plate of food to the racers meeting. You know. Just in case I was hungry.

I Tried To Listen

At the race meeting, everyone had their notes out. I shoved them in my back pocket so I didn't get au jus or lobster risotto on them. I also pocketed bread sticks and bread so that I could sop up the remaining au jus. Since this year's racers uniforms were BBQ aprons, there were some great front pockets to hide food for mid race snacking. I didn't hear a thing because I basically chewed through the whole meeting and the crunch of the bread sticks didn't help.

iJustine was actually behind me busy studying her instruction sheet in the above picture. The race attracts media celebs from all mediums.

I Went Back For More Food

Before they started introducing the racers, I B-Lined back to the buffet table, got another plate of food, and shoved more bread sticks into my handy BBQ racing apron. The links to the videos I'll be posting will show some strange lumps in my apron. No, it's not because I was excited. That's actually food

I Ate While Looking At The Instructions

Once I got to my station, I decided to look at the instructions, accompanied by my stash of bread sticks and a Corona. I figured that another plate of food would get in my way so I raided the bread stand. I had so many bread sticks it was actually hilarious. I think Kevin Pollack, the comedian they hired to entertain us before the race, actually looked over a few times to see where the hell I was hiding so many because I was always chewing on something.

The systems we were building were actually pretty decent for a charity event, sporting AMD Radeon HD 5830 video cards, 4GBs of DDR3 memory, a GIGABYTE AMD 880 series board, a Phenom X6 processor, and both an SSD and a platter based hard drive. In previous years, they used really crappy Thermaltake cases that must have been their bottom of the line because they were so thin. This year they used CoolerMaster HAF 912 cases and they were solid. Really enjoyed building in them and most importantly, everything fit properly inside and didn't bend like those other cases.

Kevin Pollack did his thing for 20 minutes, and I had enough food for 20 minutes. WIN!

Think About The Food

Throughout the race, I couldn't stop thinking about how good the beef tenderloin was and wondered if I would make it back to the buffet before they cleaned up. So naturally, I had to go as fast as I could and completed my build in four minutes and nine seconds. Second place was four forty four and it looked like my time was over two minutes faster than last year's winners. When I'm hungry I have to eat!

Unfortunately, because I won, I had to hang out and get pictures taken, and get interviewed by the organizers, and by BBC, and by any other news outlet that needed a statement or a picture. Didn't quite make it back to the buffet unfortunately.

What To Do For Next Year

So clearly, additional preparation and psyching myself out isn't the way I roll. I seem to do best completely winging it and with a full stomach, while showing up as late as possible, deciding only to come an hour before the event starts. I guess this is horrible advice for people looking for a secret strategy but it seems to be one that works for me. I guess that's why they had to make up a quote for me for the official press release:

“This was my third year participating in the race,” said Stephen Fung. “I came in with a strategy and was determined to build the computer in record time. I consider the Build Your Own PC Race a highlight at CES.”

I chuckle every time I read that. But I guess it sounds better than what I WOULD have told them

Here are a few videos that I found from the event including one from CMHD.TV, CoolerMaster's own in house channel:

I guess I'll be there again next year. But maybe I'll show up a bit earlier just to get my eat on. I hope the money I won and the computer I built goes to good use helping out the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

2010 has been a very busy year for me as many of you know. Those of you that follow me on Twitter and Facebook have been getting the play by play while the blog has sat dormant for most of 2010 until now. But there was a lot that kept me away.

I found out I was going to be a father and then in August of last year, my beautiful baby daughter, Alexis, came into the world. Yes, she does have a Twitter Account, naturally. I'm changing a lot of diapers these days and that's in addition to my day to day duties running Futurelooks. Around the same time she came into the world, we also had to deal with the tragic loss of her grandmother, her mom's mom, who finally succumbed to cancer.

Before that, I was leaving my pregnant wife, who at the time, could have actually popped at anytime, and headed off to COMPUTEX in Taipei. Thankfully, Alexis didn't pop out while I was in Taipei. Those of you on Twitter seemed to enjoy my never ending stream of pics and short messages about where I was and what I was seeing in one of the coolest cities in the world.

After COMPUTEX, came the worst time in Futurelooks' history as our hosting solution through Amazon failed miserably. Despite some conjecture that we may have been "mismanaging" our instances, the company eventually took the blame for the issues, admitted the fault was with them, but refused to compensate for losses. To those that blame mismanagement, I'd like to know how you manage server instances that simply disappear? Amazon EC2 is a horrible service that has oversold itself and was the root cause of a 50% drop in traffic for an otherwise thriving site. It was a very rough time indeed.

Luckily, we've been taken care of by a company called EZP.NET that specializes in FAST, FINELY TUNED and RELIABLE web hosting. The best part of this is that he's basically my neighbour. I really owe Shane and his team for bailing us out.

Yes, this past year has been full of life altering experiences. And for 2011 I'm hoping that I'll be able to share a lot more as I've made a promise to start updating my blog again right after CES 2011 which I can't believe ended just a little over a week ago. It was definitely something to blog about as I won the Build Your Own PC Race for Charity which takes place every year. I've come in second and fourth before but I've never won. What a GREAT way to kick off 2011. The best part is that the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children will get $10,000 US and 30 computers. I've got a post coming with some more pics and vids for you to enjoy a bit later.

I really hope the momentum keeps going for the rest of 2011 as I work on bringing Futurelooks back to its former glory and begin plans to kick MEGATechNews into high gear. My little side project will finally get the funding it needs and will have the talents of the formerly non-committal, freelancing writer, Michael Kwan, at the helm. Yes, his life is about to change too in 2011. Let's just say he liked it so he put a ring on it